Missed Connections
by ThatLadyHannah
Summary: Coffee shops and Missed connections. SasuHina implied.OneShot. K just incase. Coffee shops weren't his thing. In fact without being dragged there, he would've missed it completely. The way he would inevitably miss her.


Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, only the story. Thank you, enjoy.

MISSED CONNECTIONS

It was the changing of the seasons. The turning of lively summer happenings into subtle fall bustling, when he finally decided to join his friend to a locally owned coffee spot, just down the road from where their humanitarian class was held. It had taken months of denied invitations, because he never really liked those sort of places he would say, to get him to tag along.

They pushed open the door and walked through the venue, weaving through the many unoccupied tables, to the antique and somewhat neglected French doors at the rear of the building. It was nothing outstanding nothing remarkable or breath taking, the only notable thing about the independently owned shop was its calmness. As if the place was still.

In fact, he added inwardly, if it weren't for being directed there in the first place he would have completely passed the place without ever knowing. He would have never noticed the small narrow building squished between two newer ones, nor its neutral tan cracked paint job. Not the old worn out brown door with bits of blue paint barely clinging to its surface. Or it's windows fogged and warped vaguely, by time.

He would have never ventured into its somewhat boring interior, with mixed matched Salvation Army furniture haphazardly set up in no particular way. On black and white linoleum tiles that bubbled and peeled from age. Nor walked toward doors that were once obviously very beautiful, left in a condition that could barely pass for safe.

No he wouldn't have ever even noticed the Caffiene-Go. And he probably would never come back.

As he followed the slightly messy man in front of him to the back part of the store into an outside courtyard enclosed by cement walls long overgrown with vines and wild flowers of various geneses, he took slight notice of only one other patron.

She sat there, feet in a white wicker chair that would obviously break any day, with an open computer and a steaming cup on the table. She held a tablet in one hand and reached out to her mug with the other.

She was nothing spectacular either. Hair that was no one color as it had grown out from the last time she dyed it, exposing darker black roots that stopped and then turned to a faded indigo tinted black, pulled up carelessly in a futile attempt to keep it out of her face. A face of common features, and slightly smeared make up from a day of obvious constant activity. Yes this girl was as the shop was, nothing, had he again not been directed, he would have ever notice on his own.

These were all passing thoughts as the pair themselves sat down and began to pull out their own computers and text books and place them on a garage sale quality metal table that had no twin. Before walking back in to order a drink. He studied the menu for a while before finally settling on a cup of green tea and bottle of water.

'$3.78,' the barista told him before promising to bring their orders to them when it was ready. He dug through his wallet and brought out a five dollar bill, telling the younger alternative man before him to keep the change.

Walking back to the table uninterested in the work he laid out for himself he let his mind go blank as he sat down and began his work. If you asked him today he could not tell you what class he was studying for, that late afternoon.

Only a steaming cup and a bottle of water being placed beside his various books brought him out of his haze, if only to thank the barista. It was then he notice an entire pot of hot black liquid was being carried on the tray the young man held. A pot that was soon gingerly placed on the woman's table.

She looked up and smiled and quietly thanked her server before turning her attention to poring another cup of dark fluids containing the worlds number one addiction.

But in that moment of her smiling and then quickly snapping back to the pensive face he saw her first wearing, and back into some other world of deep brooding thought, he became enchanted and curious about the unremarkable female across the small lot from him.

Observing how she sat in the right corner of the yard, back to the walls that kissed behind her. A position that would give her clear view to her surroundings and even into the store itself. How she never looked up from her tablet, even when the lip of the mug in her hand met human lips. The long sips she would take. And her adjustment of her position every few seconds.

Suddenly he felt defensive. She could study them and evaluate them if she so please, not that he thought she would from the way she engrossed herself with the screen before her. But she could if she wanted. He also felt ashamed for having had stared so long and turned his attention to his companion. Starting small talk, making small comments and remarks in between their studying. Three hours of studying and mind numbing reading passed before it was wrapped up for the night. And he couldn't help but to turn around to see if she was still there.

And she was. Wearing the same face only her brow slightly furrowed a bit more than it had been, and a pair of headphones had been placed over her ears. As far as average went she was, he concluded, slightly above in her aura of silence and distance from the world around them. Maybe one day he would see her again. And she wouldn't know but he would about the day he saw her.

A few months passed, and then a few weeks more after that, before he found himself meandering around the small college streets unconsciously leading himself to a brown door with flecks of blue paint. Mindlessly pushing it open and walking to the counter, when he realized where he'd wandered into. From there he decided it was about time to sit and enjoy some protection from the sharp cold embrace of Mother Nature outside, and ordered once again a green tea and bottle of water. He sat himself at a table near the left side of the windowed French doors and mind a blank, gazed outside unaware of what he was staring at.

Until it hit him, like a rock, that he was staring at her. A woman he'd long since forgot about. With fresh indigo-black hair only half pulled up this time. Feet still in a white wicker chair that hadn't broken as once predicted, eyes still glued to a screen held by one hand the other holding a mug. Mouth underneath a scarf but still her features remained the same. Unremarkable and pensive and only made slightly alluring by the air of silence and distance that hung around her.

This time he did not pull his eyes away even as his beverages were set in front of him and he gave a half hearted thank you. He was intrigued and truly curious. But not so much that he'd attempt to approach her. He just watched as the server tugged their coat closer to them as they walked out to replace an empty pot of coffee beside her.

How much does she sit there. How often had she come to this invisible place to be engulfed in a secret private world only interrupted every so often by polite thank you's to her constant seemingly endless supply of caffeine. And how long had she been performing an obvious routine not only for herself but for the employees as well.

It seemed like hours before he removed himself from his seat. Tea now cold barely having been touched, water now room temperature and not been open. Again he left the Caffeine-go.

Curiosity, an almost incurable disease of the heart soul, and mind, plagued his everyday life for two weeks. Two weeks passed, and everyday the thoughts of his mind always fell back to an unremarkable place the was the home to an unremarkable person. Two weeks of no control of where him mind wandered to seemed to make the days and nights longer every passing moment. It was two weeks before he returned.

Telling himself it was just to test a theory that she was in fact, always there. As he willed his feet to slow, and leisurely stroll the campus roads leading him to the small unnoticed store, he began to feel different of it.

Though truly unnoticeable, it seemed it was ethereal and mystifying in its quiet presence over shadowed by more bustling businesses surrounding it. And as he finally caught first glimpse of the frosted fogged windows, and blue speckled door, his breathe caught. When reaching to gently urging the door to open, his heart skipped and he knew in an instant that he would be returning regularly from then on out to the soft soothing whisper of escape the building promised.

As last time and the time before he walked the same path between empty tables. That he now quietly thanked and found comfort in for being different from each other. Straight to the bar to order his, he assumed now, usual. Pulling out another five dollar bill for his three dollar and seventy-eight cent tab and letting the barista, a young mousy type woman this time, to keep the change.

He sat in the same chair at a table just to the left of magical French doors of underrated quality. Consciously this time he stared out windows sweating now from the different temperatures on either side of them. And even through blurred barriers of glass he found the pensive face he for some reason or another needed to see.

Without fail there she was, in the same state as she had been. A constant, in the ever chaotic changes of life. She was his handle, his secret now. An average unseen woman, who to him at this moment he knew was more mythical than anything.

Weeks, then months passed. It started only once or twice a week he would go. Then as life began to pick up in the blooming of life that is spring, he went more. Finally deciding the hours spent there in silence he could study, though he knew he really wouldn't.

And soon everyday he stared at what now appeared to be an untouchable unreachable goddess. One he always said he would finally talk to, or maybe just ask the workers of the shop about, one day.

But that never happened. And that would never happen.

In the last two weeks of spring as student scrambled to write papers and pull all nighters in a last ditch effort to pass their finals. A week he himself began to scramble. The entrancing woman he wanted to know more, but never wanted to disturb, his handle, his stable constant, did something different.

Her faithful tablet and deeply concentrated face with furrowed brows, replaced by her laptop and a cracked façade. This was not supposed to happen, she was not supposed to change. Her feet should be in the wicker chair, now pushed far away, maybe even kicked there. The mug on the table was not steaming as it should. And she hunched over furiously typing. No she was not supposed to be this way. And he desperately wanted to find out why she was. But he never left his seat, glued to it as his eyes were glued to her. And her face in its slight broken state seemed so beautiful and so dangerous. Like an otters dam that had long since been abandoned. If something were to break the river would flood.

He watched still for hours as usual, before finally deciding to go home and sleep before his last two finals. And in the next two days containing those last two evaluations, he did not set foot in the Caffiene-Go.

Two days from when she changed, he finally came back, and as he all but threw himself through the gate way to his mythical getaway, his heart dropped in the feeling of something was horribly wrong. And time stood still as he numbly mindlessly strode to the counter. Without noticing himself already having pulled out his fiver. And when his eyes met the young mans, the same one from his first ever visit, in front of him he knew it would never be the same.

'She's not here, sir. And.' His voice cracked and he stuttered in a breathe to collect his words, 'And she won't be coming back. Would you still like your-'

The boy was cut short as the man turned away with haste and walked to the double wood and glass doorway that had for so long been a secret barrier between him and his sentient stability. And for the first time, since the first time, walked through. And directly to the old worn table in the right hand corner of the lot. Staring down scrutinizing every detail, remembering the exact set up of her world. Her chair still positioned back to the corner. His fingers traced sloppy rectangles where her neglected laptop would sit open facing her. Slowly his hand moved and rested where her hot beverage would sit idly waiting to either be emptied into her system, or refilled from a pot that was never empty. His eyes finally settled on her chair again.

A ghost of a memory, faint and wilting, he saw he sit there. Messy hair, always being pulled away from her average face. A face of one expression, hiding one thousand more meanings, than just a concentrated furrowed brow. What had been behind those distant eyes, inside her secluded world. How could it all be hidden so well by one expression. The way she had sat insisted she had wanted to make her self small enough to disappear, but self contradicted her routine set up of things to take all the space she needed to create a comfortable private universe.

He heaved a heavy breathe and without a thought he took a seat, not hers, but the one he had planned to one day take when he finally decided to connect with her. And reached a hand to the fraying white wicker chair beside him picking at the woven wood not minding, or maybe not noticing, the specs of paint that chipped and sprinkled off with every snap of its crafted material. And he realized, maybe had he sat there sooner in her world, he would have never missed that connection.


End file.
